


Traces

by LittleRaven



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet, Calm After Surviving the Storm, Caretaking and comfort, Character receives much-deserved comfort all the misery canon inflicted on them, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enjoying watching Lover do mundane things, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 03, Triple Drabble, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24311773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: They walk back from a patrol.
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16
Collections: Fluffy as a Cloud Flash Exchange





	Traces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calenlily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calenlily/gifts).



She'd missed watching him. Angel moved quietly, never a trace left of his presence, not a single disturbance left to the naked eye. Buffy had never wanted any more Slayer powers than she already had, but she wondered what it would be like to be able to smell him as he did her, to detect the invisible hints of himself in the graveyards of Sunnydale, that she would be able to find him the way he did her, without asking or guessing or planning it ahead. 

“It’s a little unfair, you know, that you can always find me and I can’t do it with you.” She looked up at where he walked by her side, on their way home—wasn’t that strange? The mansion where so many terrible things had happened, home. Yet it was where he had come back, she had learned when he regained his ability to speak in sentences, and where she had helped him come back to himself. It was theirs. She had returned to the apartment once, to get him his clothes. 

Angel was quiet for a moment. In the space between her words and his answer, she wondered if he had ever gone back. 

“I do know how to find things. But Buffy,” and he was looking back, his earnestness furrowing his brow, “I was in hell.” 

Her own eyes crinkled with the memory of tears. She stopped walking. He stopped with her, put his hand on her cheek. 

“I was in hell. And I remembered your name. You’ll always find me.” 

“Well,” she said shakily, “that was a lot.” 

“Yeah, I’m realizing that too.” 

They stood, his hand marking her cheek more than any visible bruise could. Buffy leaned into it, cupped it with her own and, kissing his fingers, closed her eyes.


End file.
